Yesterday, I discussed my taste for time-management books. It is a critical subject to address because it bleeds into each area of life. Punctuality is simply a time-management matter. Some people feverishly work right up to the cut-off point on each assignment or project they do. But the effort, foreboding, and last-minute panic scouse borrow the fun out of all of it.

And some folk appear forever in a rush, pushing and driving, sometimes running here and there. Resource allocation permits room for ease and humor, much-needed oil to ease the friction made by motion.

Which brings us back to the council we studied yesterday in Ephesians five. Being reasonable, clever, and wise in the rationing of our time. In a book I was reading, The Time Trap ( I informed you I used to be a sucker for such volumes ), I came on a catalogue of the hottest time wasters. They helped identify some specific areas of disappointment I must continually watch. Who has not heard the real life story of Charles Schwab and Ivy Lee? Schwab was president of Bethlehem Steel. Lee, a consultant, was given the common challenge : “Show me a technique to get more things done with my time.” Schwab agreed to pay him “anything inside reason” if Lee’s idea worked.

Lee later gave the executive a sheet of paper with the plan:. Jot down the most crucial jobs you have got to do tomorrow.

When you arrive in the morning begin at once on number 1 and stay on it till it is finished.

Try it so long as you like, then send me your check for what you suspect it’s worth. That one idea turned Bethlehem Steel Company into the most important independent steel producer in the world inside 5 years. How much did Schwab pay his consultant? A few weeks after receiving the note, he sent Lee a check for $25,000, admitting it was actually the most lucrative lesson he had ever learned. I’d just blow it on another time-management book. 

Some folks can’t say no thanks to a salesperson at the door. Others have the toughest time passing up a free puppy. Or driving by a garage sale without stopping. Still others find it incredibly difficult to resist the urge to bet. My weakness is books on the investment of my time. Books that let me know ways to replace being busy with being effective. Books that caution me to think things thru before falling into them. I frequently recall what Bernard Baruch once asserted.

Whatever disasters I’ve known, whatever blunders I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed privately and public life, have been the implications of action without thought. The antidote to that problem is described best by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians:. Ensure you understand what the Master wants. Some alarm down within my system goes off whenever I sense a waste of energy in what I am doing—when there’s some leak in my time dike I have not managed to plug.

Without desiring to be highly-strung about it, I am getting a little twitchy when I suspect I’m really not living purposefully, when I’m not making the maximum of each opportunity, as Scripture so clearly commands. The verse that appears just before the passage I quoted pushs a long, pointed index finger into the chest of its reader as it screams. Today, we’d say it like this : “Hey, wake up.

“the simplest thing in the world is to drift thru life in an obscure, careless demeanour.

He tells us to take time by the throat, give it a good shake, and declare : “That’s it. I am going to manage you—no longer will you manage me. That angle is a most important step and a major secret to living above our circumstances instead of under them.

Undiscerning love spawns and invites more heresy than any individual are prepared to believe. One of the tactics of survival when facing “the flaming arrows of the malevolent one” ( Ephesians 6:16 ) is to make absolutely sure we have cinched up the belt of truth rather firmly around ourselves. And what helps us do battle with the enemy also bolsters us in relations with chums. A Christian without discernment is sort of a submarine in a harbor plowing full speed ahead without radar or periscope. Or a loaded 747 attempting to land in dense mist without instruments or radio. Tons of noise, a great amount of power, good inclinations, till.

Do I hear you exclaim you would like discernment but do not know where to go to find it? James fifteen guarantees knowledge to people who ask for it. People who have the illness are regularly highly transmissive.

God is looking to us to determine if the Cross of Christ is embellished on our hearts and lives. The early Christians adhered to the picture of the Cross as it helped them remember Jesus.

They didn’t see Him as still hanging on the cross, but viewed it as a symbol of God’s eternal love and forgiveness. So I may hold dear the old craggy cross, until my prizes at last I lay down ; I will be able to adhere to the old craggy cross, and exchange it some day for a crown.”. The Cross wasn’t the end or the final word on the state of humankind.

It definitely was an obligatory step that needed to be taken by Jesus before God’s deliverance might be completely realized by all who would come to like and worship Him. When we take up the Cross of Christ, we crucify all that we are except for Jesus. This is our glory, and the empty cross represents our crucified life.